The Issues of the National Campaign of 1892

Table of Contents

To the Hon. Carl Schurz:

Sir: The undersigned, citizens of Brooklyn, heartily join in the invitation tendered you by the Cleveland and Stevenson campaign clubs of Kings County to address a meeting in this city on the present national political situation.

It has been your custom in our principal political campaigns, from that which resulted in the first election of Abraham Lincoln until the present time, to discuss public questions, not only with disinterested frankness, but with a sincere regard to the larger and enduring interests of the whole country rather than to the partisan exigencies of the moment. We have not always been in political accord with one another or with yourself; but, whatever the differences of opinion formerly or now between us, we are agreed that the interests of the Nation will be promoted by your public and early discussion of the important issues which the American people are now called upon to decide. Very respectfully yours,

Gentlemen: I highly appreciate and sincerely thank you for the great distinction you confer upon me by your request that I should publicly discuss the issues to be decided by the American people at the coming Presidential election. In compliance with your wish, I should be glad to deliver an address before a public meeting were I not, to my sincere regret, prevented from doing so by ill health. I shall, however, with great pleasure lay before you in writing what would have been the substance of my speech. You do me the honor to say that it has been my "custom to discuss public questions with a sincere regard to the larger and enduring interests of the whole country rather than to the partisan exigencies of the moment." Such has at least always been my endeavor, and I shall submit to you now with entire candor what I think the most important consequences will be, of the action of the people, one way or the other, at the coming election. And the terms of your letter assure me that I am addressing men who always conscientiously consider in what manner they can best serve the public interest before making up their minds as to how to vote.

We are told that the tariff is the chief issue of this campaign. I certainly do not underestimate the importance of any of its aspects, but I regard it as only a part of a far more comprehensive question which is not merely economic, but political in its nature, and concerns the general working, in fact the moral vitality, of our democratic system of government. And this is of far greater consequence than mere considerations of material interest. Let us look at our present political condition.

There is a school of pessimists growing up among us who, whenever anything goes wrong, are ready to declare democratic government a failure and to despair of the Republic. I do not mean that insignificant and ridiculous class of poor beings who affect to be ashamed of calling themselves Americans, ape the customs of foreign aristocracies and run after foreign titles. They are simply snobs. But I mean certain more serious persons whom the contemplation of the frequent mishaps in the conduct of popular government has made faint-hearted and gloomy. If their dismal state of mind only led them more sharply to find fault and criticise, it would do no harm, and might do good. But when it goes so far as to discourage every attempt at improvement as useless, it is harmful indeed. Let us remind these pessimists that if they apply the same methods of criticism and the same reasoning by which they make our democratic government a failure to aristocratic or to monarchial government, they will surely make them out failures likewise; and so every other kind of government, until at last they will reach the conclusion that all forms of government are failures, and that it is absolutely useless to try any. Only anarchy will remain, and they are not likely to make that out a success.

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